The research will focus on the long-term impact of hurricane damages on communities. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

A Texas Tech professor has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the economic resilience of communities after hurricanes.

With an intended total amount of about $280,000, the project is under the direction of Daan Liang, assistant professor of construction engineering. The award is effective Sept. 1.

“In this research, we’ll focus on investigating the long-term impact of hurricane damages on communities,” Liang said. “Specifically, we’ll examine key factors affecting the speed and magnitude of disaster recovery with respect to local economy and built environment. The result of this work could be used to facilitate policy changes for making coastal communities more resilient in facing future disasters.”

The project is titled Development of a Quantitative Model for Measuring Regional Economic Resilience to Hurricanes. The co-principal investigators are Bradley Ewing, area coordinator for the Department of Information Systems & Quantitative Sciences in the Rawls College of Business and Kishor Mehta, Horn Professor of Civil Engineering.

Liang has studied probability models to determine how the construction of buildings affects their vulnerability against severe windstorms. Recently, his research has focused on the advancement of remote sensing technology in documenting and assessing wind damages to residential structures.

One Response to “Professor Awarded NSF Grant to Study How Communities Recover from Hurricanes”

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Comments

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…"

With an annual budget of about $6.9 billion (FY 2010), they are the funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing.